Charles Wendell Colson

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Alternative Title:
Charles Wendell Colson

Charles Wendell Colson, (“Chuck”), American political and religious figure (born Oct. 16, 1931, Boston, Mass.—died April 21, 2012, Falls Church, Va.), was a close political aide (1969–73) to U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon and was the reputed mastermind behind the campaign of “dirty tricks” advanced to discredit the president’s opponents that culminated in the Watergate scandal. He was tried and convicted (1974) for having obstructed justice in an elaborate cover-up staged to hide the activities that took place to destroy the credibility of Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg (who in 1971 had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times). Colson had hired E. Howard Hunt (and accomplices) to steal files from the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and he had then spread alibis for the burglars around Washington. Upon his release after seven months in prison, Colson declared that he was a born-again Christian, and he devoted the remainder of his life to Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM), which he founded in 1976. In the 1990s Colson became a leading voice in the evangelical political movement, and he and Roman Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus published Evangelicals and Catholics Together (1994), a discourse that advocated for religion-based policies in government. Colson’s ideas gained traction in Washington, and Pres. George W. Bush reportedly used Colson’s prison work as a springboard for his own notions on providing federal funding for faith-based social services. In 2006, however, a federal judge in Iowa ruled that a joint effort of Colson’s PFM and the state of Iowa violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on a government establishment of religion. Colson, a graduate (1959) of George Washington University, had practiced law before becoming Nixon’s aide. His rights to practice law, vote, and serve on a jury—revoked upon his conviction—were reinstated in 2000 by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Colson, who was the recipient in 1993 of the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, published several faith-based books and a best-selling autobiography, Born Again (1976).